University of Virginia Library

OF THE STREET-SELLERS OF GLASS AND CHINA
CEMENT, AND OF RAZOR PASTE.

The sale of glass and china cement is an old trade
in the streets, but one which becomes less and
less followed. Before the finer articles of crock-
eryware became cheap as they are now, it was of
importance to mend, if possible, a broken dish of
better quality, and of more importance to mend a
china punch-bowl. Dishes, however, are now
much cheaper, and china punch-bowls are no
longer an indispensable part of even tavern fes-
tivity.

The sellers of this cement proclaim it as one
which will "cure any china, stone, or earthen-
ware, and make the broken parts adhere so firmly,
that if you let it fall again, it will break, not at
the part where it has been cemented, but at some
other. Only a halfpenny, or a penny a stick."
These traders sometimes illustrate the adhesive
strength of the composition by producing a plate
or dish which has been cemented in different
places, and letting it fall, to break in some
hitherto sound part. This they usually succeed
in doing. For the cementing of glass the street
article is now perhaps never sold, and was but
scantily sold, I am informed, at any time, as the
junction was always unsightly.

There are now four men who sell this cement
in the streets, one usually to be found in Wilder-
ness-row, Goswell-street, being, perhaps, the one
who carries on the trade most regularly. They
all make their own cement; one of the receipts
being — 1 lb. shellac (5d.), ¼ lb. brimstone (½d.),
blended together until it forms a thick sort of
glue. This quantity makes half-a-crown's-worth
of the cement for the purposes of retail. The
sellers do not confine themselves to one locality,
but are usually to be found in one or other of the
street-markets on a Saturday night. If each seller
take 5s. weekly (of which 4s. may be profit), we
find 52l. expended yearly by street customers in
this cement.

I include razor paste under this head, as some-
times, and at one time more frequently than now,

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the same individual sold both articles, though not
at the same time.

There are twelve street-sellers of razor-paste,
but they seem to prefer "working" the distant
suburbs, or going on country rounds, as there
are often only three in London. It is still
vended, I am told, to clerks, who use it to
sharpen their pen-knives, but the paste, owing to
the prevalence of the use of steel pens, is now
almost a superfluity, compared to what it was.
It is bought also, and frequently enough in public-
houses, by working men, as a means of "setting"
their razors. The vendors make the paste them-
selves, except two, who purchase of a street-
seller. The ingredients are generally fuller's
earth (1d.), hog's lard (1d.), and emery powder
(2d.). The paste is sold in boxes carried on a
tray, which will close and form a sort of case,
like a backgammon board. The quantity I have
given will make a dozen boxes (each sold at 1d.),
so that the profit is 7d. in the 1s., for to the 4d. paid for ingredients must be added 1d., for the
cost of a dozen boxes. The paste is announced
as "warranted to put an edge to a razor or pen-
knife superior to anything ever before offered to
the public." The street-sellers offer to prove this
by sharpening any gentleman's pen-knife on the
paste spread on a piece of soldier's old belt, which
sharpening, when required, they accomplish readily
enough. One of these paste-sellers, I was told,
had been apprenticed to a barber; another had
been a cutler, the remainder are of the ordinary
class of street-sellers.

Calculating that 6 men "work" the metropolis
daily, taking 2s. each per day (with 1s. 2d. profit),
we find 187l. the amount of the street outlay.